Turning Thirty

I am writing this as a thirty year old.  Younger, I thought it was important to find new truths with each passing year, or definitely with turning the big bold, round number like thirty.  But today I don't feel like I have learned any new knowledge that has surprisingly enhanced my life.  What I will tell you is exactly how I feel at age thirty and allow you to see for yourself.

At thirty I am, at one moment wholly content with my accomplishments, my family, and friends.  Nothing in life could make me more happy.  I feel like I am living the American Dream.  I am, I just don't feel it.  I feel it in my bones and believe that it is a certitude I cannot argue against.  If I were to ever get depressed by the lack of my accomplishments I would brush it off and say I was being too self-indulgent or a whiny baby.  I have done what I set out to do in my early twenties, that time when today, at 30, looked like an impossible frontier that I would never reach.  But here I am.

Now, with all this contentment I feel, there is no easy way to rest upon this acceptance.  That would be, somewhat, un-American.   At thirty, I am hopeful for what lies in store, but also fearful that what lies in store is ten years of doing the same thing that I am currently doing now: teaching, raising kids, and reading.  Will I finally write a book?  Will I get a new degree?  A new job?  There are so many unknowns, and I feel like I am on the very edge of I don't know what.  To be honest, I don't feel timid about it.  I think at thirty I feel a resolute tolerance for that which I cannot yet identify or understand the form.  Formlessness leads to form, eventually.  There is nothing to worry about.

Seeing What is Right in front of you

The idea of what is right in front of you is the most invisible thing is one of great importance.  The examples of this are abundant.

The chinese have a proverb, the fish are the last to see the water
The example with my daughter and the gate
Kenneth Koch's poem one thing hides another
The idea of windshield wipers that are always there, but never seen until it rains
Speech "This is Water" Wallace Stevens.
The theory of white culture
The idea that men don't have Men Studies in college, but women do.

What are some other examples of this?
Buddhist example of discontent/suffering stems from not seeing what is truly in front of one, the magic of existence is fused out of our consciousness through repetition and the ego's ability to increasingly predict the circumstances one finds himself.  When we so readily predict our tomorrow, we are not surprised by anything.  The element of surprise is a way to charge the chemistry of the brain; it offers a new electricity to areas of the brain who are accustomed to operating within habit, within the amount of what is expected.